Dissociation and Surrender
Being alive without waking up to the truth of emptiness is like joining the waking dead.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
On rare occasions, when a wild animal gets its paw trapped in the metal teeth of a trap meant to catch him, he will gnaw off his paw to save its life. This wild being’s nervous system has been overwhelmed and since it cannot fight or escape its situation – it ends up doing anything . . . anything to end the unbearable situation.
Dissociation in humans is equally dramatic and comes on line when the nervous system is on overload (typically from trauma). Unlike other defenses which tend to bury or suppress our pain, dissociation, like an animal caught in an inescapable situation, cuts us off from an experience – wipes it out of our awareness, out of our memories, removed from our bodies, and certainly any connection to the feelings or sense of self.
As with our wild animal, this dire act is for survival . . . in our case, psychic survival. “I cannot escape this desperate situation, so I become less present (actually not present) so I am not destroyed. “This is not happening!”
It is a wise and effective way of protecting ourselves (even though very costly – leaving us sorely fragmented) until we can retrieve, face and integrate what has been cut off.
I bring up all this to give some background to what often happens when someone with trauma in their background approaches the essential message of surrender as they seek or live more deeply a spiritual life and/or an awakening.
Surrender calls us into direct contact with life itself – an alignment with reality, whether the momentary reality is desirable or off-putting (to the mind). In the process of surrendering our conditioned beliefs, our protective defenses, our limited opinions . . . our perception of ourselves, the world, and the universe, is called into question. Into healthy questioning. The mind, shaped by familial, cultural, religious and societal conditioning leading to misperceptions about what we really are, loosens and in an unglued state dissolves into spacious awareness.
In the process of surrendering (over and over again for most of us) confusion dissipates, opening to our natural state of love and wisdom. This clarity illuminates reality unfiltered by the misunderstandings our minds have fed us.
In the process of surrendering there is a luminous emptying of everything that is not real and is not love.
To let go of something . . . anything, really, we must be in touch with it and have some degree of attachment to it. For any part of us that is dissociated (left out in the cold or in some storage container feet or miles from our awareness), surrendering cannot make any sense. In fact, surrendering can feel re-traumatizing; as if you are confirming the “non-existence” of any part of you that has been dissociated.
This naturally matters.
Because surrendering allows an emptying out of what is in the way of our true nature.
In order to surrender, we need to be able to touch, taste, sense, be aware of what needs emptying. It takes re-acquainting yourself with what has been gnawed off, gently and with great compassion welcoming any and all parts and memories back to life. The psychic knots and unconscious material left out prevent the full expression of our compassion. Experiences and the felt sense of all that is missing must be embodied.
If you have known enough trauma to have wisely dissociated some part of yourself . . .to save your life and/or your sanity, the gradual process of re-associating and surrendering allows us to remember, to feel, to reconnect and to embrace all that has been dissociated. It might take a while but Life’s natural flow moves in that direction.
I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.
Andrea Gibson
It has taken me decades to reclaim the many, many parts of myself that were left in cold storage. It has taken decades for me to warmly embrace everything I could not bear to face and feel when it happened. It has taken decades to embody everything that was disembodied. It has taken me decades to come into being and fully become in this moment. In “before” time, I would tell someone an incident from my childhood as if I was a tv anchor reporting the news. I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. I was numb. Since then, each time I recovered a memory or moved towards it, it and I became more real . . . more filled out . . . more embodied . . . and more compassionate.
To tell the truth, I would do it all over again . . . something in me intuited the “rightness” of the process and the potential it might offer. I want to shout from mountain tops – don’t miss out. Every feeling . . . EVERY feeling is love. A radiant creativity and wisdom come out of emptiness and silence. Each death (remembering, feeling, and surrendering) opens into an aliveness that shimmers. Radical acceptance of what is aligns you with ease and flow . . . like a lazy river which comes upon twists and turns, rocks and boulders, upheaval and soot that it effortlessly moves around, under and over.
The really good news is we are designed to heal; we are, in essence, whole and complete. Life is waiting for you to make that discovery and pick up all your pieces, hold them close to your heart, and allow them to melt into your divine wholeness. You ARE here, you ARE aware and you CAN let go. The retrieval and surrender process can transform dissociation into a beautiful non attachment – being fully present and non-reactive; instead of clinging. Trusting Life and yourself, no matter what is happening in your inner or outer life.
Come back to yourself so you may surrender.
When you love life, it loves you back.
Surrender to the light that shines in the glare of a black ink spot.
Surrender to the echoes of love, bouncing off the precious moments of being alive . . . wildly alive, knowing each breath out is the death of the moment that just passed.
Surrender to each finger prying itself from the grasp of the anchor.
Surrender to the heartbeat of the crow as it swoops in and flies away with a plump salted peanut in its beak.
Surrender to the earth-shattering heartbreak of being fully alive, feeling the aches and joy misting the whole earth.
Surrender to the soul’s symphony rising and falling seen in your eyes . . . and through your eyes.
I stopped holding on; that was the offering.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche